


Resurrection and Retribution

by glacis



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2010-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:11:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark, red Kryptonite, a bad attitude + Lex, a need for retribution, and an unexpected resurrection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resurrection and Retribution

_Resurrection and Retribution, spoilers for ‘Exodus.’_

He should have known something was amiss when his father provided the jet for his honeymoon.  Or perhaps when Helen came back.  Or even when Clark didn’t show up for the wedding.

Clark was always saving him.  When Clark didn’t make it to the church on time, Lex should have known it was all going to go downhill from there.

Of course, he hadn’t expected quite how far downhill, quite how fast, and quite how fucking cold and wet it would get.  Blurring eyes scanned the horizon for something, anything, other than blue.  Dimly, as the world went black, he thought he saw a brown fuzzy mass in front of him.  Thought he felt sand under his feet, his knees, his cheek, on his tongue.

Gave up thought and fell into the blackness.

 

The world was fucked.  His father was right; Clark was no son of his, just as Jonathan was no father of Clark’s.  Martha was the one hurting, and Clark knew he should be sorry about that, but all he could feel was rage.

He was pissed of at Jonathan for being such a jerk, at Lana for being so weak, at Chloe for prying too far, at Pete for trying to stop him, at Lex for marrying that bitch… at Lex, for leaving.  The motorcycle felt good between his legs, under his ass, under his hands.  The wind felt good on his face.  Metropolis beckoned.

Fuck Lex.  If he could leave, so could Clark.

He felt that way for four whole days, the kick from the ring on his hand fueling his fire.  He pulled a ski mask over his head, ripped an ATM off the wall of a bank, and took as much money as he found, then spent it that night on booze that did nothing for him, drugs that did less, women who got him hard and got him off but didn’t have what he wanted.  On the second night he tried men, too, and that was closer, but worse, in a way, because every time he pulled a guy’s jeans down and fucked his way in, all he could see was Lex.  The whimpers, the blood, the struggles beneath his hands and his chest and his cock were exciting, but not in a way that touched him.  Nothing touched him.  No matter who he touched.

Early on the fifth day he headed downtown to open another ATM when he saw a headline.  It screamed in his head as it did on the page, bold black type like a slap across his face.

BILLIONAIRE MISSING AT SEA!

Leave it to Lex to turn his honeymoon into a life-threatening situation.  Clark found himself grinning, then shook his head.  He wanted to say fuck it, wanted to leave Lex to drown with his stupid bitch of a bride, but he wanted even more to save Lex.

Not for Helen, no fucking way.  Not even for Lex.

For himself.

Casually shattering the glass on the newsstand, he pulled out a paper and walked away, reading through the scanty details on the first page, then devouring the related stories in the next four sections.  Lex’s disappearance made news from the front page to the business section to the society columns.  Clark scowled at Lionel’s picture, spat at the hypocritical crap quoted from the man who’d left Lex to die more than once just since Clark had known him, and stared so intensely at the information regarding the search that the paper caught on fire.

Dropping it into the gutter, he went into a bookstore, and headed for the maps section.  He didn’t bother stealing the book when he found it; he simply memorized the area where Lex had last been seen and headed to his bike.

He was going to find Lex.  Save his life.  Keep him away from his father and get rid of the bitch if she was still around.  Then Clark was going to fuck Lex until they both felt it.  His grin was feral, anticipation tightening his belly.

This was going to be fun.

 

Thirst woke Lex.  Lying with his calves and feet still in the water, sand digging into his skin, so hot he thought he would spontaneously combust, he forced his brain to work.  Then he forced his body to follow his will.

To take his mind off the cramps wracking his limbs, he recreated the route in his mind, trying to figure out where the hell he was.  If they’d been following the flight plan at all, they’d been on their way to Antigua.  From the fact that he was on land, and not floating in circles in the middle of the Atlantic, they must have gone far enough south that the North Equatorial Current had picked him up and carried him west; so he was somewhere off the Sargasso Sea.

Well, if he had to die somewhere, a tropical paradise was better than Smallville.  Although he did miss Clark.  He started to laugh, and realized he couldn’t stop.  Where was a savior when one needed him?

He was still laughing as he pulled himself out of the surf, crawled forever across the sand, collapsed beneath a tree out of the burning sun and fell back into an exhausted sleep.  He was actually surprised when he woke up again.  He nearly cried when he realized it was rain that woke him, coming down hard enough to soak through the branch cover in moments.  He sat there, rainwater dumping off the broad leaves onto his sunburned head, and laughed again.  Wouldn’t it be ironic if he survived the plane crash into the ocean only to drown on land?

Burrowing further into the trees, finding some shelter within their tangled leaves, he grinned out at the downpour and decided, since he was going to live after all, he had to make some plans.  By the time the rain stopped and the sun came up, Lex had dredged up every memory of Robinson Crusoe he could retrieve, and set about keeping himself alive until rescue could come.

Weirdly enough, he had a gut feeling it was going to be Clark.

In the week that followed, he had more than enough time to think.  As he sliced his fingers on palm fronds, weaving them into a rough shelter, his mind replayed every moment of the events leading up to his wedding.  The on-again, off-again, on-again bride; Helen’s odd rendezvous with Lionel in the hallway of the castle; the ‘wedding present’ Lionel gave her that she never shared with Lex… could it have been a flight plan?  Instructions to give the pilot?  An RX for whatever the hell she’d used to spike the champagne?

As he sat in the sand and cracked open the shell of a thankfully slow-moving turtle with a rock that grew heavier with each blow, his thoughts wandered further back.  To Lucas, and the very long hesitation before Lionel fired the gun at Lucas instead of Lex; to being bound to a chair with duct tape while a madwoman stood over him with an ax, only to hear his father give her carte blanche on broadcast television to use that ax with impunity; to exile to Smallville in the first place.

Thank God for Clark.  Again.

When had Lionel decided that Lex was too dangerous to allow to live?  Had it been when Lex hesitated, himself, before finally pulling Lionel to safety during the tornado?  Had it been when he’d turned Lionel’s mind games with Lucas around on him?  And when had Helen crossed over to the enemy?  Lex would like to believe that she was innocent, another pawn in his father’s sick games, this one being the ultimate in their years-long battle.  But instinct screamed at him that she knew.  She’d been involved.  She’d had her own reasons for leaving him, and coming back to him, and lying to him.

Bought and paid for.  Lex wondered what Lionel had used to buy her off.  Not that it mattered, now, not really.  They thought Lex was dead.  When he got off this godforsaken spit of sand he was going to use that fact to his advantage.  Lionel was going to pay.  So was Helen.

The sun burned him, the wind cracked his skin, the sand wore at him, and as the days went by Lex hardened in ways none of the tribulations of his life before had ever managed to harden him.  Broke in ways he’d never been broken.  Chewing on a soft-shelled crab he’d poked out of a crevice in the shallows, he laughed again.

He would not let them win.

Hours passed in silent planning.  On the eighth day, as he lay resting in the shade of the trees during the hottest part of the day, a shadow fell over the sand, and warm lips pressed against his.  Lex opened his eyes to see rescue grinning down at him, all white teeth and bright green eyes.

“Hello, Clark,” he rasped.

 

It wasn’t as easy to steal a boat as Clark had hoped.  There were too many people around, and he’d have to kill somebody.  While the idea didn’t bother him, the odds were against him getting away with it.  Even if he managed to get a boat, silence whomever he found on it, toss the body in the ocean and escape, too many people would notice.  Then he’d have to fight the cops and probably the coast guard and he didn’t have time for this shit.

His gut instinct urged him to hurry.  It had been almost a week since Lex disappeared.  As the hours drained away Clark found himself less and less inclined to find Lex and fuck him, and more and more anxious to find him and make damned sure he was still alive.  Fucking could wait.  Wouldn’t do to have Lex die before Clark even got there.

Frustration led him to the cliff sides south of Santa Barbara, bike tossed carelessly beside the highway.  Too many people, too much time wasted, and he had to go NOW.  Anger built up alongside frustration until he couldn’t stand still any longer, and with a howl of inchoate rage he flung himself off the cliffs.  He’d fucking swim if he had to!

Instead, to his shock, he found himself flying.

The scream died off into uncontrollable laughter as he swooped over the waves, heading directly out to sea.  The rush of air against his skin was incredible, addictive, and he played in it for over an hour, testing himself, figuring out how to maneuver, how to turn, how not to end up taking a header into the water.  Once he figured out how fast he could go and still make out details in the ocean below, Clark stopped playing and started looking.

He knew Lex wouldn’t be anywhere populated, because a newspaper would have picked that up.  So he flew further south, as the islands got smaller and smaller, and the sun got hotter.  Weirdly enough, he wasn’t very hungry.  If anything, as he flew under the bright sun, he felt stronger than he ever had.  He kept flying, and kept looking, switching to x-ray vision to scan the rocky little beaches and the barely-there atolls as he went.

On the third day, he hit pay dirt.  There, under the trees, curled into a ball, lay a skeleton Clark knew by heart.

Landing more roughly than he’d expected, he stumbled a few yards before he got his feet under him.  Stretching, shaking himself, getting used to being on land again after being in the air so long, Clark took a deep breath and walked into the trees.

Lex looked like hell.  And sexy enough to jump right there.  His skin was red, with almost as many little blisters as there were freckles.  There was sand in the tattered pants that were all that covered him, and a fine coating of the stuff was scattered over his body, gathering at the creases and folds in his skin, caught in his eyelashes, between his fingers and toes.  There were shadows under his eyes and a frown etched into his face.

Clark thought he was beautiful.

Kneeling silently next to him, Clark stared at Lex for the longest time, held hostage by the emotions running through him.  Relief, heady in a way none of the alcohol he’d drunk had been, and lust, deeper than any urge he’d ever felt, mixed up with a protective anger so deep he thought he’d scream with it.  The closest he’d ever felt to this was when a crazy mutant had nearly murdered his mother… No, Martha, she wasn’t his mother… but even that was a pale shadow compared to his rage on Lex’s behalf.  They were going to die, whoever did this to him.  They were going to die, and Clark was going to kill them.

When the storm inside him subsided enough that he could move again, Clark leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on Lex’s chapped, cracked lips.  Heat, from the sun, then another kind of heat, radiating from Lex, shot straight through Clark.  Lex’s mouth moved under his, dry and soft, the tip of a tongue feather-light against Clark’s upper lip.  Clark drew back, taking his time, and grinned down into the sharp blue eyes staring up at him.

“Hello, Clark,” Lex said.  His voice sounded rusty, like he hadn’t used it much, or he’d blown it out screaming.  Clark shivered.  It was a turn-on.

“Seems to me we’ve been here before.  You ready to go home?”  He slid his arm around Lex’s shoulders and pulled him to a sitting position, sliding down to sit beside him.  The bright eyes darkened, then looked away.

“Define home,” Lex muttered.

“Where we make it,” Clark answered immediately.  Lex shot him a sideways glance.  “My father threw me away.  I’m as dead to him as you are to yours.  There’s a kind of freedom in that, don’t you think?”

Lex’s mouth twisted into a half-grin.  “That’s one way of looking at it.”  His eyes narrowed as he looked out at the pristine ocean, then back at Clark.  “How’d you get here?”

“Flew,” Clark told him, his own grin breaking free.  “I have a few things to tell you.”

”Wait a minute,” Lex stopped him, turning to look directly at Clark’s face.  “What do you mean, your father threw you out?  Your father loves you.  He’s not a psychopath like Lionel.”

“Mo…Martha lost the baby.  Jonathan blames me.  A lot happened while you were getting married.  Speaking of psychopaths, where’s the bitch?”  Clark made a show of looking around, although he knew from his earlier scan that Lex was the only human on the island.

“The bitch?” Lex asked dryly, one brow inching up.

“Yeah,” Clark went on blithely, “the latest homicidal skank you married.  Did she make it through the crash?  Or did you feed her to the sharks?”

“She wasn’t on the plane when it crashed,” Lex answered slowly, staring at Clark.

“Figures,” Clark snorted.

“Are you okay, Clark?” Lex asked quietly.

“Better than I’ve ever been,” Clark assured him.  “Now, listen carefully, and before you ask, no, you’re not hallucinating.  I’m going to tell you the truth, then we’re getting the hell off this sand-pit and getting you something for your skin, then having the best dinner you can keep down, after surviving off…” Clark glanced around at the bits of shell stacked in a neat pile at the base of a nearby tree.  “Turtle?  That actually sounds pretty good.”

Lex opened his mouth to ask, again, if Clark was okay, but Clark stopped him with a finger across his lips.  He accidentally licked it, and Clark gave him a very intense look before shaking his head as if to clear it.

“Okay,” Clark rumbled, his voice lower than usual, before he cleared his throat and stopped staring at Lex’s mouth like he was trying to memorize it.  “Crunch time.  I’m not a meteor mutant.  I’m an alien.”  Lex coughed.  Clark plowed on.  “Came down in a pod with the meteors, been hiding who I am, lying through my teeth and working like a fucking mule ever since.”

He unbuttoned his shirt, showing Lex the scarring on his chest.  Lex groaned a protest, hand coming up instinctively to trace the raised pattern on Clark’s skin.  “This is the symbol of my House.  It’s time for me to go after my destiny.”

Clark took Lex’s wandering hand in one of his and raised it far enough to lick across the skinned knuckles.  Lex hissed, eyes widening.  “That’s where you come in.  I have the strength; you have the strategy.  You want to rule the world; I was sent here to do exactly that.  I am the last son of Krypton; with you by my side, we will be unstoppable.”

“An elegant précis,” Lex said solemnly, after he regained enough composure to get his tongue to work again.  “Now I have to ask: are you on drugs?”

“The truth will set you free, Lex.  Wanna see?”  Scooping Lex up against his body before Lex could form an answer, Clark bent his knees and kicked off the sand.  They were flying in an instant.  Tucking his face against Lex’s ear Clark whispered, “Time for a resurrection.”

The stunned look on Lex’s face was priceless.

 

They were nearly to land before Lex pulled himself out of shock.  Refusing to give in to his fear of flying sans engine and wings, grudgingly accepting that Clark was finally telling him the truth after all, he forced himself to figure out where they were going to go.

Smallville, for obvious reasons, was out.  So was Metropolis.  He didn’t know what exactly had gone down between Clark and his parents, but the bitterness was pronounced in the little Clark had to say about them.  Calling them by their given names was a strong indication the Kents wouldn’t be much use in this particular crisis.

Lamar it would have to be.

One of the few secrets Lex managed to keep from his father’s investigators was a rural spread on the banks of the Arkansas River halfway between Lamar and Granada, Colorado.  Lex had a jet hangered at the municipal airport in Lamar, since unlike Clark he actually needed a plane in order to fly, and he could pilot it himself.  It would come in handy.  So would the state-of-the-art communications hub and lab concealed in one of the outbuildings.  The layout was based on his mother’s Montana ranch, but the contents of the buildings were uniquely Lex.

Unclamping one hand from the death grip he had around Clark’s neck, he yelled the details over the wind, waited for the nod from Clark letting him know he’d heard, then curled back up against Clark’s chest.  One area of the ‘stables’ was a fully-equipped medical lab.  Given the way he was feeling, it was a damned good thing.

In a ridiculously short period of time they were flying low over the border of Kansas and Colorado.  After Lex screamed at him the first time, Clark took care not to be seen by the motorists on highway 50.  They touched down in the field behind the main house, Clark stumbling once but catching himself before he could dump Lex on his ass in the dirt.  Lex appreciated the effort.  By then, if Clark had dropped him, Lex wasn’t sure he had the energy to pick himself up.  Exhaustion caught up with him and had him weaving in and out of consciousness as Clark started to carry him into the house.

“No,” Lex managed to say, “see that grey stone building?”  He waved in the general direction of his lab.  “Medical stuff there.  Call Toby.  Nobody else.”

Concentration fading fast, Lex felt his head fall against Clark’s shoulder, then knew nothing more until the next afternoon.  When he woke, he found himself in bed, skin slick with ointment, head remarkably clear and stomach rumbling.

“You’re a lucky son of a bitch,” Toby said from the side of the room, walking over to hand him a glass of orange juice.  “Anybody else’d be fish food.  You ain’t even gonna scar.”

Lex emptied the glass in three swallows, then smirked up at Toby.  “Double your regular fee and you never saw me.”

Toby grinned, nodded, and handed Lex a bottle of pills.  “Two every four to six hours, stay in bed the next day or so, drink as much as you can, and eat soft foods until your system stabilizes.  I never saw ya.”

Lex gave him the key to a locker in a bus station in Kansas City, and five thousand in cash from the bedroom safe.  Toby grinned again and ducked out the door.

He was worth every penny, and every gram.

Lex turned to the tray on the table beside the bed and started methodically eating his way through the blandest meal he’d had since he was last shot.  It tasted like heaven.

“You look good like that,” Clark’s voice purred from the doorway, and Lex glanced up from his cream of wheat to stare.  What he saw made him drop his spoon.  He didn’t notice.

He was too caught up in the unexpected vision of Clark wearing nothing but a pair of Lex’s own black silk boxers, what looked like acres of perfect skin over muscled arms and legs that seemed to go on forever.  The silk matched the black of Clark’s hair, and the darkness behind his eyes.  The only color to him was the damp cinnamon of his lips, matching the nipples already starting to peak, and the startling green of his eyes.  Lex couldn’t be sure, because he was too busy trying not to hyperventilate while maintaining the pretense of composure, but he could have sworn Clark’s eyes had a red cast to them.

Then, faster than Lex’s eye could follow, Clark was across the room and crouching astride him on the bed.  Big hands, incredibly strong and surprisingly gentle, spanned his shoulders.  Pushed him back against the soft pillows.  Held him there while Clark leaned down and kissed him so deeply Lex was panting by the time Clark paused for breath.

“Mine,” Clark said simply, then laid a blazing trail of kisses from Lex’s mouth along his jaw, licking and biting down the side of his throat and over his collarbone, pausing at the center of his chest to suck hard until Lex was writhing under the pressure.  Too soon Lex was light-headed, but Clark paid no attention, single-mindedly marking Lex from his neck to his nipple, then down his belly to his cock.  It turned Lex on harder and faster than he had been in years.

Clark treated Lex’s cock to a thorough tongue-washing, lapping roughly at the head then trailing down the length to his balls.  Lex tried to say something, anything, give encouragement, question Clark on where he’d gotten his unexpected expertise, tell him to stop messing around and go back to sucking him, damnit, but all he could force out was a low moan.  Clark seemed to like that, if the rumbling growl he gave around his mouthful of Lex’s balls was any indication.

That rumble was the beginning of the end, as far as Lex was concerned.  Still bone weary, still riding a wave of adrenaline that hadn’t stopped since his bride and his father tried to murder him, and completely off-balance by the fact that it was Clark sucking him down like a master slut, Lex felt his brain shut down as his body erupted.  He screamed “Clark!” as he came, body bucking under Clark’s hands, into Clark’s mouth.  Every nerve in his body felt fried, the blistered skin on his back and shoulders felt shredded, his muscles felt like they’d been boiled.  He hadn’t come that hard in… he couldn’t remember.

He certainly couldn’t remember the last time he’d trusted his bed partner enough to pass out after climax.  It only lasted a few seconds, but it was astonishing.  He never lost control to that extent.  When he forced his eyes open, still panting for breath, his hands still caught in Clark’s hair, the first thing he thought was that his back was in agony.  The last time it hurt that badly Desiree actually had set him on fire.

The second thing he realized was that Clark was fucking him.

Hard.

Lex jolted against the sheets, legs dangling helplessly to the sides of Clark’s thighs as Clark reamed him.  It felt like he was being split open with a rail tie.  His ass hurt almost as much as his back did.  Every time Clark pushed his way in, the force of the thrust shook a grunt out of Lex’s throat; every time Clark pulled out, Lex gasped for air.

So deep.

He’d never been fucked the way Clark was fucking him.  Never felt another man’s cock so far up his ass he could practically feel it in his throat.  Never felt owned the way Clark was owning him.  All he could do was lay there and try not to pass out again from the sheer power of Clark moving over and inside him.

He loved it.

There was a rightness to it he’d never felt with anyone else, either.  This wasn’t a power game, because this wasn’t a game.  Clark had the power, and Lex wanted him to use it.  A voice whispered in the back of his mind that it would always be like this; Clark would own him in the bedroom, and Lex would own Clark out in the world.  This was how it would be.

Lex came a second time without fully realizing he’d gotten hard again, as Clark thrust in and stayed there, pulsing and growling and grinding into him.  This time when he passed out, it was evening before he woke up.

Clark gave him orange juice and water, toast and milk and beef broth.  Then Lex pushed the tray aside, pointed down at his cock, and said, “Suck me.”

Clark did.

When he was done, Lex got the fucking he deserved.  It hurt, and it healed something that had been bleeding inside his heart for years at the same time.  Afterward, Lex curled up in Clark’s arms and told him quietly, “Tomorrow we begin.”  He felt Clark grin against his temple.

“Can’t wait,” he growled.

Neither could Lex.

 

One of the coolest things about Lex’s hideout, as far as Clark was concerned, was that Clark could keep Lex in bed even as Lex used his wireless keyboard and mouse and computer that looked like it came from a Star Trek set to start taking down Lionel.  Taking down Lionel was important to Lex.

Keeping Lex in bed was important to Clark.

Okay, so destroying Lionel was important to Clark, too.  After all, the son of a bitch tried to kill Lex.  Again.  Nearly made it, too.  So he was going down.  But keeping Lex in bed meant Clark got to suck Lex as often as Lex could take it, which was good, because Clark thought he was addicted to the taste of Lex’s cock.  And he knew he was addicted to the feel of Lex’s ass around his own cock.  The way Lex smelled, the taste of his sweat and his come, the sounds he made, the lost look he got in his eyes right before he came… Clark was addicted to all of it.

It was a good thing Lex healed fast.  A good thing, too, that Lex didn’t sleep much.

Lex had money Lionel didn’t know about, a lot of it, and Clark watched with approval as he put it to good use.  Lex hadn’t been declared dead yet; not enough time had passed since his disappearance.  But Lionel wasn’t wasting any time, either.  Lucas, who’d relied on Lex to save his worthless hide in the past, came out of hiding to be named Lionel’s new heir-apparent.  Clark snarled when he saw that piece of news on the monitor.

Lex laughed.  It was the coldest thing Clark ever heard.  Turned him on so much he’d had to take the laptop away from Lex, turn him on his belly and fuck him until he couldn’t move.

Clark really liked it when Lex got all rule-the-world, and Lex liked it when Clark went caveman on him.  It was a perfect match.

Once in awhile, when Lex was busy making transfers or bankrupting holdings or whatever the hell it was he did to destroy Lionel’s empire, Clark would take a run.  Several times he ended up in Smallville.  He made sure his parents… he made sure Jonathan and Martha couldn’t see him.

Jonathan had more grey in his hair, and he frowned all the time.  He looked old, unhappy, exactly like he deserved, as far as Clark was concerned.  Martha seldom came out of the house, but a couple times Clark watched her sit on the porch late at night when nobody else was up.  She looked calm, if sad, and it settled something restless in Clark to see her that way.

Sometimes, he looked at the ring on his finger, and thought about taking it off.  Usually when he was watching Martha.  Then Jonathan would come out on the porch, and the rage would come back.  Clark would feel his muscles tense as the urge to hit Jonathan built up, then he’d run all the way back to Lex.  Sometimes he’d fly.

Those were some of the rougher fucks.  Funny, though, how Lex didn’t mind.  From the way he yelled, and fought to get closer, and came hard enough to hurt himself, Clark had the feeling Lex really liked those fucks.

Took a little longer to recover from those, though.  Clark didn’t do that very often.

When Clark got back from his latest trip to what had been his home, to remind himself the only home he had now was Lex and he liked it that way, he found Lex chuckling over something on the computer screen.

“What’d you do?” Clark asked, crawling up to join Lex on the bed.

“Well, over the course of the past month I’ve been undermining the stock values for most of LuthorCorp R &amp; D holdings.  That house of cards collapsed yesterday morning.  Last night there was a run on the rest of the stock, and I’ve raided most of his subsidiaries under shadow corporations.  Lucas hasn’t a clue how to deal with this, and Lionel is fighting on too many fronts to handle any of them effectively.”

He sounded very pleased with himself.  Clark grinned.  He loved it when Lex was smug.  “So, what’d you do today that’s got you so full of yourself?”

Lex gave him a truly evil grin.  Clark shivered, feeling his cock harden.  There was something so compelling about Lex when he was scheming.

“I hacked into Lionel’s central corporate server system and set loose a self-replicating, self-launching virus.  By now, every computer running on a LuthorCorp WAN or LAN is infected.  Coming on the heels of the other disasters, this will blind them just long enough for me to do this…”  His fingers flew over the keyboard.  Clark watched in fascination as Lex’s face relaxed into a wide, happy smile.

It was scarier than the evil grin.  And even more of a turn-on.

“Which was what?” Clark prompted when the flying fingers finally stopped.

“Bought him out, then liquidated my holdings.”  Lex beamed at Clark.  Clark blinked back.

“Huh?”

Lex laughed, a short bark of satisfaction.  “I didn’t just cripple the bastard.  I sold the house out from under him and left him with nothing.”

That was all Clark could stand.  Lex, radiating like that, was irresistible.  Clark crawled between Lex’s legs, pushed the laptop further up along Lex’s chest until it was out of his way, and sucked Lex’s cock all the way down his throat.

There were advantages to not having to breathe like a regular human.  Not to mention having a really, really strong throat.

The laptop landed beside them, as Lex let out a howl and grabbed Clark’s hair hard enough to rip it out by the roots, if it had been anyone but Clark.  In seconds he was panting, moaning, pushing his hips hard against Clark, hammering his cock into the throat milking him.  Clark kept swallowing, pushing Lex’s legs apart and sliding his hand back until he could get a couple fingers hooked in Lex’s hole.  It was still slick from that morning, when Clark woke Lex up with a nice easy ride.

Pushing further in with his fingers while swallowing harder, Clark stretched Lex’s hole and kept up unrelenting pressure on Lex’s cock.  Lex gave a wail like a lost soul and emptied his balls down Clark’s throat.  Clark hummed happily and scissored his fingers in the channel convulsing around them.  He swallowed until Lex was dry, and kept swallowing until Lex was frantic to get away from the suction on his over-sensitive flesh.  When Clark finally allowed Lex’s cock to escape from his mouth, Lex was quivering, nearly out of his mind.

Clark pulled Lex’s hips up using the fingers embedded in his ass, flipped him over with one hand on his thigh, and replaced his fingers with his tongue, pushing Lex’s come into the wet hole under his mouth.

That took Lex from nearly to completely out of his mind.

Before Lex could catch his breath, Clark climbed up on his knees and shoved his cock all the way up Lex’s ass with one push.  Lex keened, his body shuddering.  Clark growled, loving the tight heat around his cock, then reached around and closed his fist around Lex’s cock.

Lex instinctively tried to get away from the rough touch on his sore cock, pushing himself even harder back onto Clark.  Clark rumbled his approval, and milked Lex’s cock like he would a cow who didn’t want to give milk.  It had about the same effect.

Whimpering and humping back and forth between Clark’s fist and his cock, Lex hardened again, reacting to the intensity of the fingers squeezing his cock and the sheer bulk plowing his ass.  Clark grunted and thrust as hard as he could without actually breaking Lex, over and over, and Lex responded with a helpless shudder.

It took awhile for Lex to get completely hard again, since his balls were practically empty and his cock was aching.  Clark loved to fuck him like this, when his body was slick with sweat and flushed with blood just under the surface of his skin.  When his arms collapsed beneath his face and his knees shook, and only Clark’s cock in his ass kept him from falling on his belly on the bed.  When he couldn’t control the sounds he made, couldn’t keep from getting hard, couldn’t keep from coming even though he had so little to give he barely wet Clark’s knuckles.

That’s when Clark really loved to fuck him.  When Lex was completely abandoned, completely submerged and owned by Clark.  When he could do nothing but lie there under Clark’s hands, hang on Clark’s cock, take what Clark gave him and beg without words for more, always more.  Until Clark was overwhelmed in turn by Lex surrounding him, scent and sight and touch and heat, and Clark flooded Lex, pouring out everything he had into Lex’s body, seed and heart and heat.

It was the only time he ever felt peace.  He knew, from the still way Lex curled into him, from the determination in the exhausted hands clutching his hair, the contentment in Lex’s eyes, that Lex felt the same.

They rested there, found comfort there, then returned to do battle with their enemies.

 

Five weeks into his campaign to destroy Lionel, Lex found a link he’d been hoping he wouldn’t find.

Lionel used everyone.  There were no innocents in Lionel’s orbit; his influence tainted them, his manipulations soiled them and they either fell or were discarded.  Lex traced back one of the most persistent lines of inquiry into the attacks on LuthorCorp to a name he had hoped to avoid.

He didn’t know how Lionel had gotten Chloe Sullivan to work for him.  It probably had something to do with Clark.  She’d been fixated on Clark for longer than Lex had known them, but Clark had never truly wanted her.  And now, given what Clark and Lex had, Clark never would.

This could cause trouble.  The girl was young, but she was talented, and now she was too close to the truth.  She had contacts in unexpected places, and she was using all of them.  He’d turned back several attempts to gain information originating from her, and each one got closer.  They were coming more often, too.

Unfortunately, Chloe wasn’t one who could be bribed or intimidated into backing off.  She was working with Lionel, so she had what had until recently been a powerful protector, and Lex wasn’t ready yet for the truth of his resurrection to become known.  His retribution was not yet complete.

Also, Chloe had a personal stake in discovering the truth; Clark.  When she found out she still wouldn’t be able to have him, her quest for truth would become a vendetta.

Lex turned the problem over in his mind.  He couldn’t tell Clark.  He wasn’t sure how Clark would react, and in fact, Lex had a feeling Clark would be dangerously impulsive in dealing with the girl.  No, this was a threat Lex had to take care of himself.

He picked up the phone and dialed a number he’d held in reserve since before he’d come to Smallville.  Before his life exploded along with that plane, he would have felt reservations.  As it was, he felt a dim sadness for potential wasted, but no hesitation as he gave the orders.

The next morning on her way to class, Chloe Sullivan lost control of her car and drove it over the side of an embankment.  When the gas tank exploded, she was killed instantly.  Subsequent investigation would show faulty wiring in the steering column.  It was ruled an unfortunate accident.

No one found the timer that melted in the heat of the fire.  The man was a professional, after all.

That afternoon when Clark came back from Smallville, Lex watched him carefully.  Clark cocked his head to one side and gave Lex a flirty smile.  Once again, Lex thought he caught a glint of red in the deep green eyes.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Lex?” Clark asked, sliding up beside Lex’s chair and swinging it around.  Perched on his knees at Lex’s feet, he slowly pushed Lex’s legs apart and reached up to lower the zipper on Lex’s slacks.

Lex swallowed, feeling his cock harden at the hunger in Clark’s expression.  “She was a threat,” he forced out.  “Working for Lionel.”  He waited for the explosion.

“Good thing you took care of it, then, isn’t it?” Clark asked, then worked Lex’s erection out through the slit in his boxers and slid it into his mouth.

Giving up on thought, thankful Clark saw things the way he did, Lex tangled his hands in Clark’s hair and pulled his face further down until his chin was nudging Lex’s balls.  “Ah, fuck, just like that… yeah.”  He didn’t know if he was agreeing with Clark’s assessment or simply encouraging him to keep giving head the way he was doing it, but in the end it didn’t matter.  The threat was eliminated, Clark was where he belonged, and Lex could go forward with his plans with one less problem to worry about.

After draining him dry, like he always did, Clark pulled Lex out of his chair and draped him over the desk.  Lex felt like a straw man with all his stuffing sucked out when Clark got done with him, but as always, it was only the first round.  There were advantages to having an alien for a lover.  Especially an insatiable alien.

Clark sat in the chair behind Lex, running his hands over Lex’s ass, down to stroke the outside of his thighs then back up the inside, his knuckles brushing the tip of Lex’s cock where it hung down between his legs, then his fingertips stroking the emptied balls.  Lex shivered as Clark kept up the steady touch, then pushed Lex’s trousers and boxers down around his ankles.

Holding on to the edge of the desk as his head swam, Lex almost missed when Clark wrapped his hands around Lex’s hips and pulled him back to sit on the cock standing straight up from Clark’s lap.  With his legs closed and his own cock trapped between his thighs, Clark’s cock felt impossibly large as it pushed up inside him.

“Oh, god, Clark, yes,” Lex moaned, struggling to accept the bulk, relaxing his ass the best he could while squirming to lessen the friction on his cock and balls.  “Fuck, yes, oh fuck!” he yelped as Clark suddenly jammed the full length of his cock up Lex’s ass.  A glint of red caught his peripheral vision and he glanced down to see that the ring on Clark’s hand was glowing as if lit from within.

Then Clark bucked up under him, burrowing even deeper than he usually did, and Lex lost track of everything but Clark’s cock reaming through the center of his soul.

Much later, as he lay on his belly on the bed, laptop balanced on the pillow in front of him and Clark working antiseptic lotion into his abused asshole, Lex thought again of the oddity of the glowing ring.  There was something there, something he could use.  Maybe something he’d been using, without knowing it.  He smiled to himself, letting a gasp escape as Clark deliberately massaged the lotion over his prostate, humping into the bed as Clark tormented his hole.

There’d be time for research later.  Right now, he had an alien to fuck.

 

When he thought about it, which he only did when he found out about it and when he watched them bury her, Clark thought he should feel more than vague regret.  Chloe had been his friend.  For awhile.  Then she’d been his stalker, then she’d turned on him, then she’d teamed up with Lionel and threatened Lex.  Clark glared at the freshly-turned earth and decided he didn’t need regret.  It was a waste.

On his way out of town, flying high enough nobody could see him but low enough he could still keep an eye on things, he nearly lost his coordination and fell out of the sky when he saw Lex’s latest homicidal whore of a wife walking into the Luthor castle, Lionel at her side.  Clark had to say that for her, the bitch had balls.

Moving faster than the security cameras could track, a skill he’d perfected much earlier in his visits to Lex, he followed them to an underground lab beneath the castle.  He wondered if Lex knew about it.  Wouldn’t be the first time Lionel hid something like that from Lex.  Clark concentrated, listening through the steel and glass walls, glad they hadn’t lined them with lead.

“Have you gotten the results back on the blood, my dear?”

Lionel sounded just as slimy as he always had.  Helen didn’t seem to mind.

“I still have tests to run.  There are compounds in the sample that can’t be of terrestrial origin, and it’s taking some time to break them down.”

Clark froze.  He knew Jonathan shouldn’t have trusted her.  The bitch had his blood.  And she was working with Lionel, to use it for something, no doubt against Clark himself.  Damn Jonathan, for letting her take his blood, and damn Helen for using it.

“It’s a good thing your late lamented husband isn’t here to impede your progress,” Lionel told her, sounding like he was enjoying himself way too much.  Clark felt his teeth grind at the smugness in the old man’s voice.

“Better champagne I have never tasted,” Helen replied lightly.

Oh, yeah.  She was in on it.  Up to her ears.

Clark started to see red, and closed his eyes, determined not to let them find him there.  If they had his blood, they might know about the Kryptonite rocks, and if they had those, he wouldn’t be able to escape and go back to Lex to tell him what he’d seen.  Clark took a deep breath, forcing himself to be calm.  On the other side of the wall, he heard the echo of Lionel’s shoes as the old man left the lab.

It was several moments before Clark could trust himself to move.  His mouth twisted into a snarl, the shadow of red still gleaming in his eyes, he sped through the doors to the lab.  Helen was standing at a gleaming steel table, bent over a microscope.  Clark looked up at the security cameras and aimed a thin stream of red fire at them.

In an instant they burst into flame.  Helen gave a short cry of surprise, which turned to terror as she saw Clark coming up beside her.

He didn’t give her time to say a word.  One hand reached out to clamp over her mouth; the other caught her by the hair and jerked swiftly sideways.

She wasn’t the first human he’d killed, but she was the most satisfying.

Dropping her body to the floor, he looked around the lab until he located several bottles of flammable chemicals in a locked case.  Ramping up the fire, he glared at them until they exploded.  The fire spread quickly.  Clark watched until it engulfed the corpse, then shot through the building straight up into the sky.

As he escaped, he flew past a helicopter.  For once, his luck was in, as both the pilot and the passenger, Lionel, were staring horrified at the explosions rocking the castle below.  Clark laughed softly to himself, considered for an instant swatting the helicopter out of the sky like a fly, then restrained himself.  Lex was having fun destroying Lionel, and Clark wasn’t about to get in the way of Lex’s well-earned enjoyment.

Back across the border and home, he walked in to find Lex peering at the computer screen.  A crooked smile crawled across his face.

“So, Clark,” he drawled, not looking away from the monitor, “something you want to tell me?”

Clark sped over to him and stood behind him, dropping kisses along the side of Lex’s neck and watching the streaming news video from Smallville’s lone television station.

“Must be a slow day for news,” he grinned, then nipped Lex’s ear, causing him to moan.  “My condolences.  Wanna fuck?”

Lex was still laughing when Clark had him naked and spread on the bed.

 

The next few weeks showed Lex a side of Clark he would find increasingly useful as their ascent continued.  It began when Clark killed Helen.  Five days later, Clark made another trip to Smallville.

Clark returned to his old home town, but unlike the past trips, where he’d been sure not to be seen, this time he deliberately sought an old friend out.  There were too many people who knew his secret, and this one actively hated Lex.  That made him a threat to both Clark and Lex, and Clark wouldn’t allow that to continue.

Clark gave him a chance.

He didn’t take it.

Pete sat looking at the pond, tossing rocks carelessly into it, watching the water ripple.  The sun was setting and the water reflected the red of the sky.  He looked faraway.  Clark watched him for awhile before he stepped out of the shadows.

“Hi, Pete,” he said quietly.

Pete jumped anyway, spinning around so fast he had to catch himself with one hand or he would have fallen over.  “Clark!” he exclaimed, his face lighting up with a huge grin.

“Shh,” Clark told him, walking forward to crouch beside him.  “Keep your voice down, somebody might hear.”  He picked up a rock and skimmed it across the water.

“Ah, man,” Pete groaned, the smile disappearing completely.  “You still got that stupid ring on.”

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it, Pete,” Clark told him, laughing under his breath.  “You’d be amazed…”

“Yeah,” Pete snorted, “and probably appalled too.  Hey, where you been, man?  Things have been happening around here.  Your parents, they’re totally freaked about you being missing.  Chloe…” he choked, then cleared his throat and continued.  “Chloe got killed in a car accident.”

Clark hid his smile.  “I heard.  Bummer.”

Pete glared at him.  “Bummer?  That’s all you’ve got to say?  But I bet you were all torn up about Lex buying it.”

Clark shot him a glance.  “Something like that, yeah.”

“Good riddance to bad trash,” Pete scowled.  Clark glared at him, this time.  “Man, I don’t know you when you’re hopped up on that red rock.  We got to get that off you.”

In that instant Clark knew what he had to do.  Knew what Pete would do if he had the opportunity; one chunk of green rock, Jonathan with an ax aimed at his head, and it’d be all over.  Pete knew too much, and Pete hated Lex.  Pete would side with Jonathan, and Clark would back in his cage.

And Lex… Lex would be alone.

“You just never knew when to quit, Pete,” Clark said as he wrapped one hand around the back of Pete’s neck and held his face under the surface of the water.  Eventually the thrashing stopped, and Clark left his body there, half-in, half-out of the pond.  He flew a short way up the incline and, with a shove, toppled a tree to land across Pete’s shoulders, pushing the corpse deep into the muddy pond.

“Freak accidents,” Clark sighed with a rueful smile as he flew west.  “Smallville is ground zero for freak accidents.”

 

When he got back to the compound, Clark went to Lex and told him what he’d done.  Lex  heard him out in silence, then thanked Clark, first with words, then with his body.  By now, Clark would do anything for Lex.  Lex knew it.

Lex used it.

And in return, Lex would do anything for Clark.  Particularly those things Clark wouldn’t do for himself.

The risk of exposure was too high for Lex to come out of hiding, but once again, his contact came through.  It was a simple enough assignment.  Since Jonathan had turned away from Clark, he had to do much more work on the farm himself, and the results were showing.  Clark had done the work of four men, and Jonathan was not a young man.  One very hot day, a moment’s inattention as he hammered in a fence post, a quick drop of clear fluid into his water bottle, and Jonathan Kent died of a massive heart attack under the relentless Kansas sun.

The coroner ruled it as natural causes.  Martha wept.  Lex watched the news video.

Clark kissed him, and whispered, “Thanks.  I needed that.”

Lex would have grinned if his mouth hadn’t been full of Clark’s tongue.

Unfortunately, there was a dangling loose end that made Lex itchy.  Lana Lang was constantly at the Kent farmhouse, nosing around, as Clark reported every time he came back from spying on Martha.  It made Lex nervous.

“She’s not dangerous,” Clark assured him.  “She’s just pathetic.”  Then he tumbled Lex back onto the rug in front of the fireplace and stripped him so quickly all Lex felt was the rug burn.

As if to distract Lex from all thoughts of Lana, Clark blanketed him with kisses, licking and nuzzling from his scalp to his ankles, taking long detours on the way down.  When Lex didn’t think he could stand the sensation a moment longer, Clark upped the ante, flipping Lex onto his knees and starting all over again.  Lex was whining and moaning and cursing by the time Clark spread his ass and, holding him so firmly he couldn’t move, dove down to lick him from his balls to the small of his back.

Lex gave up on forming actual words and concentrated on taking in enough oxygen to stay conscious.  Clark was in the mood to tease, and Lex wanted to see it through to the end.  His, and Clark’s.

Clark nibbled behind Lex’s balls, taking his time, making Lex squirm.  Then he rubbed back and forth against the thin skin between Lex’s thighs, massaging him from the outside in, until Lex was shaking too hard to squirm.  Finally Clark settled in to tongue Lex’s hole, slowing down even further until Lex was quite certain he was going to go completely insane before Clark ever got around to fucking him.  He told Clark so, or at least he tried, but he had an idea the best he’d managed was a Neanderthal-style grunt.

Not that Clark minded.  If anything, Lex’s verbal incompetence spurred him on.  He curled his tongue up and dove as far in as he could go, just to hear Lex howl.  Then he flattened it and lapped up and down over the clenching hole, wetting and relaxing it only to tease it into a frenzy again.  Clark could tell by the way Lex’s balls drew up just how close to the edge he was.

So, of course, he backed away completely, not touching Lex’s ass at all, but breathing out gently over it.

Lex broke, bucking and yelping, coming without a touch from Clark’s hand.  Clark laughed out loud at the sheer power he had over Lex’s body in that instant.  Lex was too busy coming hard enough to give himself a nosebleed to care.

He’d barely come down from it when Clark angled up behind him and slid home.

The stretch, coming on top of the long teasing and the aftermath of his orgasm, echoed through Lex’s entire body.  It felt like his whole nervous system was mapped to his ass, and Clark plunged directly into the middle of it.  Lex’s body arched and snapped under him as Clark pounded into him, and Clark let him move, shifting his arms to place his hands flat on the ground on either side of Lex, enjoying the way Lex went insane beneath him.

By the time Clark lost the last of his control and humped into Lex, spilling himself as deeply as he could go, Lex was nothing but nerve and instinct, pure animal need writhing beneath him.

It was the biggest rush Clark had ever found.

Once he got his mind back, Lex decided he didn’t agree with Clark’s threat-analysis.  Lana was supremely self-centered, but she also considered Clark her own personal property, and one day Clark wouldn’t be careful enough.  She’d see him, he’d say more than he should, and Lana would use it against them both.  Lex wasn’t about to let that happen.

This one, he took care of himself.

She liked to ride her horse along what passed for hills in that part of Kansas; they’d be classified as barely a rise most places.  Some of the passages were grassy, with a few trees and the long view of corn fields.  Some of them were rocky, and the footing was tricky.  Lex picked his spot accordingly.

He stepped into the horse’s path at exactly the right time to cause a flinch.  Lex was an expert horseman, and his timing was exquisite.  Lana’s eyes flew open wide, as Lex ducked under the horse’s flailing hooves.  He put one hand on her foot, clamping it to the stirrup, and the other beneath her knee, pulling her neatly from the saddle.  Her head hit the rocks before she could get a word out.

He made certain she was dead before he tangled the rein around her wrist and slapped the horse on the flank.  With a shrill whinny the horse bolted, dragging Lana’s body behind it.  Lex watched until it was out of sight, then stripped off his bloody gloves and shoved them deep into his pocket.  They, and the coat, would be burned as soon as he got home.

Clark wandered into the room as Lex was watching the last of the leather blacken and burn away in the grate.  He slouched in the corner of the couch and looked at Lex, a smile playing around his mouth.

“So.  I heard there was an accident in Smallville today.  Made the five o’clock news.”

Lex looked over at him and raised a brow.  “The horse made it home all right, I assume?”

Clark spluttered a laugh, shaking his head.  Lex smiled serenely at him.

“I like horses.”

“So do I, Lex,” Clark responded quietly, then slid across the cushions to crowd Lex into the corner.  “Better than most humans.”

“So do I, Clark,” Lex assured him.  “So do I.”

They didn’t make it to bed that night.  That was okay, too.  Lex rather enjoyed being tossed over the arm of the couch and fucked senseless.  Clark didn’t say thank you to Lex for eliminating the latest threat, but he didn’t have to.  He made it perfectly clear with his actions how much he appreciated Lex.

Lex stayed in bed for the next two days.  They both enjoyed it.

 

It hadn’t been enough, to simply destroy Lionel’s business empire.  Lex had enjoyed himself immensely, but much as Lex hadn’t listened to Clark when Clark tried to tell him Lana was harmless, Clark didn’t listen to Lex when Lex said he could handle Lionel.

Particularly when Lionel got too close.  Close enough that one of his private investigators actually showed up in Lamar.  It was pure luck that Clark overheard the man questioning one of the grocery store clerks late one afternoon as he came in to stock up.

Of course, it was the work of a moment to tail the guy out of town, fly above him, yank the car off the road and cram it nose-first into the embankment.  It made a nice explosion, and there wasn’t enough left for any forensic evidence to point to anything beyond ‘took the curve too fast and lost control’.  But Clark had no way of telling if the man had already reported to Lionel.

He wouldn’t take the chance.

Four hours later he flew through the shadows to Lionel’s penthouse.  No one saw him come in, but then, none of the cameras were trained on the sky.  A direct assault was Clark’s favorite way to fight.

Lionel made a cardinal error, born of pride.  He took his drink out on the balcony and surveyed his kingdom spread out before him.

Moments later, with a very undignified squawk, the glass lay shattered on the cement, and Lionel, with an assist from Clark, flew forty stories straight down.  In seconds, the king was spread over quite a bit of the kingdom

The resultant mess was almost artistic.  Clark had a feeling Lex would approve.

Twenty minutes later, he poured Lex a glass of very good wine, something French Clark couldn’t begin to pronounce that looked like blood, and turned on the television.  Lex gave him an inquiring look.

“Things came to a head today, Lex,” Clark told him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and snuggling up to him as if they were watching a make-out movie instead of the Metropolis evening news.  “Lionel’s moles found Lamar, and they were heading this way.  I figured it was time to do something about it.”

Lex stiffened against him, and Clark nuzzled Lex’s neck right below his ear, earning himself a delightful shiver.  Then, being careful not to spill Lex’s wine or block his view of the screen, Clark slid down to kneel at Lex’s feet.  Pushing his knees apart, Clark nuzzled Lex’s crotch the same way he’d nuzzled Lex’s neck, and got an even more pronounced shiver.

The tragic news of Lionel Luthor’s suicide, coming as no surprise given his terrible business losses of recent weeks, led the stories that night.  Clark timed it perfectly.  At exactly the moment Lex Luthor discovered he was an orphan, he was too busy coming down Clark’s throat to care.

When Lex calmed down and stopped whimpering, Clark climbed on top him as he sprawled against the couch cushions.  Bracing one knee on the arm of the couch and the other against the back, Clark wrapped one hand around the back of Lex’s skull and fed him his cock.

Weak hands wrapped around his hips, holding on as Clark fucked his mouth, crooning gently all the time, “It was really for the best, Lex.  It was time.  It was for the best,” before Lex got himself together enough to suck hard enough to make Clark lose his train of thought.  Then Clark collapsed next to Lex on the couch and sighed, “Don’t you think so?”

Lex shot him a smirk that was more snarl than smile, and nodded slowly.  “For every season there is a time, and his had passed.  Thank you, Clark.”

Clark kissed him quiet, then took him to bed.

 

Lex knew it was only a matter of time after Lionel’s unscheduled flight before Lucas contacted him.  Given that Lionel had spent two months searching for a ghost before Clark tossed him off the balcony, Lex wasn’t surprised when Lucas resorted to cruder methods to locate him.  A classified ad in the major Kansas newspapers.  Short and to the point.

“LL TO LL.  I know you’re out there.  Let’s talk truce.”

Of course, a truce was out of the question.  Lucas was planning a double cross all along, and Lex knew it.  Unfortunately for Lucas, Lex was several steps ahead of him all the way.  Lex used their rendezvous, set up via anonymous email accounts acquired for that specific purpose and routed through Central Europe, to kill two birds with one stone.

He called the expert who’d done such a good job with Chloe and Jonathan.  Dressed in black, the assassin lay in wait for Lucas, taking him out with one blow to the back of the head that cracked his skull.  Lucas dropped like a rock, dead before he landed, and the man rifled his pockets, taking his wallet to make it appear to be a random mugging.  Foolish Lucas, taking such chances, wandering through dark alleys in the middle of the night.

The killer turned to find Lex standing behind him.  Before he could draw his own gun, Lex shot him once, point-blank, in the chest.  The dumbfounded look on the dead man’s face was amusing.  Lex had to control his laughter as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called 911.  His voice sounded suitably shaky as he explained to the dispatcher that he and his brother had been set upon by a robber, and he feared his brother was dead, and dear god, he’d just shot a man!

The morning edition was full of the news.  Lex Luthor had returned from the dead, only to have his reunion with the last living member of his family turn to tragedy before his very eyes.

It made great copy.  It also made a great cover story.  There were questions, of course, but Clark stepped forward, all shy farmboy smile and blushing cheeks, to say he’d searched for Lex for weeks until he’d found him cast away on a desert isle, then brought him home to Kansas.

Lex made damned sure the story held, complete with the Luthor yacht and the crew’s cover story.  It was a nine day wonder, his miraculous return and the sad circumstances he found waiting for him.  His father a suicide, his brother murdered, his family fortune in disarray.  He bore it all stoically, and waited until he was alone with Clark to celebrate.

The next morning Martha showed up at the door.  Clark saw her on the video feed from the security camera.

“It’s your call,” Lex told him quietly.

“I just want to see my son,” she told the guard, her voice echoing tinnily over the microphone.

Clark smiled, and twisted the ring on his finger.  Lex watched him and waited.  Eventually, as Martha grew increasingly agitated, Clark said, “What the hell.  Why not.”

“If nothing else, she’d be great for our image,” Lex agreed.  “Salt of the earth woman, All American Mom, putting in a good word for her boys as we climb to power.  Think she’ll go for it?”

Clark’s smile softened until it mirrored the innocent look he used to wear.  “I’m sure she will.”

Lex grinned back at him and leaned forward to tell the guard to let her in.  He knew as soon as he opened the door to her that it was going to work out.  In her relief and her need to hold on to the only member of her family left alive, she never looked beyond the surface.

She never noticed that the plain gold band on Clark’s hand had a red stone set in it, turned to his palm.

She was too busy hugging Lex, and telling him how wonderful it was that he was alive;  clinging to Clark and sobbing how much she missed him, how dearly she loved him.  The hard edge to Clark’s smile glanced off her, as did the ironic light in Lex’s eyes.

“I’ll give you some time together,” Lex offered, beginning to back out the room, but Martha’s hand came out, clutching his wrist almost as tightly as she held on to Clark.

“No, Lex, please.  You’re like a son to me, and I can’t tell you how devastated I was when I thought you were lost.  You and Clark… you’re everything to me.”  She began to cry, silent tears leaking down her cheeks, as she stared up at Clark as if she was memorizing his face.  “Thank God you came home,” she murmured, then added more loudly, “Thank God you brought him home.”  Whether she was talking to Clark about Lex, or Lex about Clark, Lex couldn’t tell.

He didn’t suppose it mattered.

Clark was his.  Their secrets were safe.  Their future, and their destiny, lay bright before them.  It was time for Lex to reclaim his place in the world.  He rested on hand on Martha’s shoulder, and one hand on Clark’s.  Muttering comforting nonsense to Martha, Lex looked up to find bright green eyes with a hint of malice and more adoration that he’d ever expected staring back at him.

It was going to be a hell of a ride.

 

**Epilogue**:

As fairy tales went, it wasn’t a bad one.  Lex’s rise to political acclaim was rapid and unrelenting.  At his side, Clark became more and more invisible as a new power rose; Superman, champion of Truth, Justice and the American Way According to Lex Luthor, roamed further and further afield, spying out Lex’s enemies and making certain nothing stood in his way.  By day they ruled the state, then the country, and through the power of the White House, the world.

By night, they reclaimed one another as often as humanly, or in Clark’s case, inhumanly, possible.

As the years passed and their power grew, they looked outward for their enemies, and forgot to watch those few close to them.  It took nearly thirty years, but one night, as Lex and Clark lay tangled together in an exhausted heap, Martha crept into their bedroom.  The mask of love that had solidified so long before, when she lost her husband and her child on the same day she realized just how alien her adopted son was, fell from her eyes, leaving nothing but bitterness behind.

Moving silently, she inched toward the bed.  Clark’s right arm was flung out against the sheets, dark against the white cotton in the dim room.  She leaned forward, took hold of the cursed ring that was the cause of so much of her misery, and tugged.

Clark came awake with a scream as the red Kryptonite left his finger.  His arm flew out, flailing in the darkness, and the wild swing knocked Martha across the room.  She impacted the far wall with a sickening thud.

“Mom?” Clark rasped, horror straining in his voice.

“Clark?” Lex called, coming instantly awake and reaching for the light.

The crumpled body lying on the floor confused him, but not nearly as much as Clark rocking back and forth in the bed, wailing at the top of his lungs.

“Clark!” Lex yelled, reaching for him only to watch in disbelief as Clark flinched from his touch.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Loud footsteps in the hall outside heralded the arrival of the Secret Service men, calling his name, asking if he was all right, rattling the door on its hinges.  Lex looked at Clark, then at Martha, then back at Clark… then shot around to stare at Martha, specifically at the glint of gold in her half-curled fingers.

“Shit,” he breathed, then climbed out of bed and poked his head out the door, ducking just in time to keep from getting hit in the face by one of his bodyguard’s fists.  “Nightmare,” he told them abruptly.  “I’ll take care of it.  Go back to bed.”  Five sets of unconvinced eyes stared back at him.  He sighed and pitched his voice to be heard over Clark’s animalistic wails.  “Code white, damnit, now go away!”  With that, he slammed the door in their faces.

It took awhile, but eventually they did.  Lex ignored the sound of their retreat, instead circling to kneel next to Martha’s body.  He checked her neck, just in case, but as he’d expected from the size of the dent in the wall and the smear of blood where she’d hit, there was no pulse to be found.  He reached down and plucked the ring from her cold fist.

Walking over to sit on the bed inches from Clark, rolled up in an agonized ball atop the sheet, he clamped one hand over Clark’s mouth.  It muffled the cries long enough for Lex to get his attention.

“You have a choice, Clark,” he said firmly.  Clark quieted under his hand and stared at him, tears welling up in his eyes.  “You can stay as you are, for however long you will live, knowing what you’ve done, knowing you can’t do a thing to change it.  Or you can put this ring on, turn your back on the useless guilt that’s tearing you to pieces, and walk beside me once more.”

Clark stared at him for a moment that felt like it stretched to an eternity.

“I love you, Lex,” he finally said, sounding as if he had razor blades in his throat.  He reached for the ring.  Lex placed it in his palm.

Faster than Lex could see, Clark dropped it on the side table and slammed the lamp down on it, pulverizing it.  Lex stared, his jaw dropping.

“I love you, but this is… this is all so wrong.”  Clark’s voice was thick with tears.

Lex closed his eyes against the pain, knowing it was over, knowing it had all come crashing down around him.  He should have killed her when he had the chance.

He didn’t realize he’d said the words out loud until Clark sobbed, “No!” and uncurled from the bed to hurl himself to Martha’s side.

As he’d done all his life, Lex made a decision that only appeared to be split-second.  In truth, this was one of several eventualities he’d planned for, one he’d hoped he’d never see.  Keeping an eye on Clark, cradling Martha’s body to his chest and weeping, Lex reached into the hidden compartment in the head of the bed and pulled out a lead box.  Removing a slender thread of glistening green from it, he dropped the empty box on their bed.

Their empty bed.

Walking up behind Clark, he ran one hand through Clark’s curls and whispered, “I love you, too, Clark.”  Then he slipped the garrote, woven of pure kryptonite wire he’d perfected years before, around Clark’s throat, and pulled it tight.

As they had lived together, so would they die.

When Clark finally stopped struggling, Lex looked down into the empty green eyes and touched the parted lips, now cold, one last time.  Then he loosened the pressure on the wire, allowing Clark’s body to fold over Martha’s, and walked over to the bureau.  He pulled his old 9 mm out of the drawer, the same gun he’d used to kill a killer so many years before, and returned to Clark’s side.

Stroking the soft skin of Clark’s cheek, Lex said a silent goodbye, and put the barrel to his temple.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  Yet another eventuality planned for in the hope it would never come to pass.  “Meet you in hell, my love,” he told Clark, and pulled the trigger.

END


End file.
